stable, and The Lady's Privilege. JOHN COOKE, a contemporary of Shakspeare, produced in 1599 a play called Tu Quoque; or, the Citie Gallant, which attained great popularity in its day.

END OF THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA.

The dramatic era of Elizabeth and James closes with JAMES SHIRLEY (1594-1660), whose comedies, though in many respects bearing the same general character as the works of his predecessors, still seem the earnest of a new period. He excels in the delineation of gay and fashionable society, and his dramas are more laudable for ease, nature, and animation than for profound tracings of human nature,

NATHANIEL FIELD.

or for vivid portraiture of character. He passed through the whole of the Civil War, the Commonwealth, and the Revolution, and is the link which connects the great dramatic school of Shakspeare with the very different form of the drama which revived at the Restoration in 1660. In proportion as the Puritan party grew in influence and acrimony, in precisely an equal degree grew the hostility to the theater; and at last, when fanaticism was rampant, the theater was formally and legally suppressed, the play-houses were pulled down by bigoted mobs of citizens and soldiers, and the performance of plays, nay, the simple witnessing of theatrical representations, made a penal offense. This took place September 2, 1642, and the dramatic profession may be

regarded as remaining under the frown of government during about fourteen years from that date, when the theater was revived, but revived, as we shall afterward see, under a completely different form, and with totally different tendencies, moral as well as literary.

The Elizabethan drama is the most wonderful and majestic outburst of genius that any age has yet seen. It is characterized by marked peculiarities; an intense richness and fertility of imagination, such as was natural in an age when the stores of classical antiquity were suddenly thrown open to the popular mind; and this richness and splendor of fancy are combined with the greatest force and vigor of familiar expression. We have an intimate union of the common and the refined, the boldest flights of fancy and the most scrupulous fidelity to actual reality. The great object of these dramatists being to produce intense impressions upon a miscellaneous audience, they sacrificed everything to strength and nature. The circumstance that most of these writers were actors tended to give their productions the peculiar tone they exhibit: to this we must attribute some of their gravest defects as well as many of their most inimitable beauties-their occasional coarseness, exaggeration, and buffoonery, as well as that instinctive knowledge of effect which never abandons them. But besides being actors, they were, almost without exception, men of educated and cultivated minds; and thus their writings never fail to show a peculiar aroma of style and language, which is perceptible even in the least fragment of their dialogue. They were also men, men of strong passions and often of irregular lives; and what they felt strongly, and what they had seen in their wild lives, they boldly transferred to their writings; which thus reflect not only the faithful images of human character and passion under every conceivable condition, not only the strongest as well as the most delicate coloring of fancy and imagination, but the profoundest and simplest precepts derived from the practical experience of life. It should never be forgotten that they all resemble Shakspeare in the general texture of their language and the prevailing principles of their mode of dramatic treatment, and only differ from him in the degree to which they possess separately those high and varied qualities which he alone of all human beings carried to an almost superhuman degree of intensity.

URING the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. the masque was a favorite theatrical entertainment of the court. The origin of the masque is to be looked for in the revels and shows which, during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, were presented on high festive occasions at court, in the inns of the lawyers, and at the universities, and in those mysteries and moralities which were the precursors of the legitimate drama. Henry VIII., in his earlier and better days, had frequent entertainments, consisting of a set of masked and gayly dressed characters, or of such representations as the following: In the hall of the palace at Greenwich a castle was reared, with numerous towers and gates, and every appearance of preparation for a long siege, and inscribed La Forteresse Dangereuse; it was defended by six richly dressed ladies; the king and five of his courtiers then entered in the disguise of knights, and attacked the castle, which the ladies, after a gallant resistance, surrendered, the affair concluding with a dance of the ladies and knights. Here there was nothing but scenery and pantomime; by and by poetical dialogue, song and music, were added; and when the masque had reached its height in the reigns of James and the First Charles, it employed the finest talent of the country in its composition, and, as Bacon remarks, being designed for princes, was by princes played.

Masques were generally prepared for some remarkable occasion, as a coronation, the birth of a young prince or noble, a peer's marriage, or the visit of some royal personage of foreign countries; and they usually took place in the hall of the palace. Many of them were enacted in that banqueting-room at Whitehall through which a prince who often took part in them afterward walked to the scaffold. Allegory and mythology were the taste of the age; we must allow for the novelty of classical imagery and characters at that period, and it may be only a kind of prejudice, or the effect of fashion, which makes us so rigorously banish from our literature allusions to the poetic creations of Grecian antiquity, while we contentedly solace ourselves in contemplating, through what are called historical novels, the much ruder, and perhaps not more truly represented, personages of the middle ages. The action of a masque was always something short and simple; and it is easy to see that, excepting where very high poetical and musical talent was engaged, the principal charm must have lain in the elegance of the dresses and decorations, and the piquancy of a constant reference from the actors in their assumed to the actors in their real characters. Usually, besides gods, goddesses, and nymphs from classical antiquity, there were such personages as Night, Day, Beauty, Fortitude, and so forth; but though the persons of the drama were thus removed from common life, the reference of the whole business of the scene to the occasion which had called it forth was as direct as it could well be, and even ludicrously so, particularly when the object was to pay a compliment to any of the courtly audience. This, however, was partly justified by the private

character of the entertainment; and it is easy to conceive that, when a gypsy stepped from the scene, and, taking the king's hand, assigned him all the good-fortune which a loyal subject should wish to a sovereign, there would be such a marked increase of sensation in the audience, as to convince the poet that there lay the happiest stroke of his art.

DURING THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH. Jeremy Collier, in his "Annals of the Stage," has printed a document which gives a very distinct account of the court-masque as it was about the time when the drama arose in England-namely, in the early years of Elizabeth. That princess, as is well known, designed an amicable meeting with Mary Queen of Scots, which was to have taken place at Nottingham Castle, in May, 1562, but was given up in consequence, as is believed, of the jealousy of Elizabeth regarding the superior beauty of Mary. A masque was devised to celebrate the meeting and entertain the united courts, and it is the poet's scheme of this entertainment, docketed by Lord Burleigh, to which reference is now made. masque seems to have been simply an acted allegory, relating to the circumstances of the two queens; and it throws a curious light not only upon the taste, but upon the political history of the period. We give the programme of the first night:

The

"First, a prison to be made in the hall, the name whereof is Extreme Oblivion, and the keeper's name thereof Argus, otherwise called Circumspection; then a mask of ladies to come in after this sort:

"First, Pallas, riding upon a unicorn, having in her hand a standard, on which is to be painted two ladies' hands, knit in one fast within the other, and over the hands written in letters of gold, Fides.

"Then two ladies riding together-the one upon a golden lion, with a crown of gold on his head; the other upon a red lion with the like crown of gold; signifying two virtues; that is to say, the lady on the golden lion is to be called Prudentia, and the lady on the red lion Temperantia.

"After this to follow six or eight ladies, maskers, bringing in captive Discord and False Report, with ropes of gold about their necks. When these have marched about the hall, then Pallas to declare before the queen's majesty, in verse, that the goddess, understanding the noble meeting of these two queens, hath willed her to declare unto them that those two

virtues, Prudentia and Temperantia, have made great and long suit unto Jupiter that it would please him to give unto them False Report and Discord, to be punished as they think good; and that those ladies have now in their presence determined to commit them fast bound unto the aforesaid prison of Extreme Oblivion, there to be kept by the aforesaid jailer Argus, otherwise Circumspection, for ever, unto whom Prudentia shall deliver a lock, whereupon shall be written In Eternum. Then Temperantia shall likewise deliver unto Argus a key, whose name shall be Nunquam, signifying that, when False Report and Discord are committed to the prison of Extreme Oblivion, and locked there everlastingly, he should put in the key to let them out nunquam [never]; and when he hath so done, then the trumpets to blow, and the English ladies to take the nobility of the strangers, and dance.”

On the second night a castle is presented in the hall, and Peace comes in riding in a chariot drawn by an elephant, on which sits Friendship. The latter pronounces a speech on the event of the preceding evening, and Peace is left to dwell with Prudence and Temperance. The third night shewed Disdain on a wild boar, accompanied by Prepensed Malice, as a serpent, striving to procure the liberation of Discord and False Report, but opposed successfully by Courage and Discretion. At the end of the fight," Disdain shall run his ways, and escape with life, but Prepensed Malice shall be slain; signifying that some ungodly men may still disdain the perpetual peace made between these two virtues; but as for their prepensed malice, it is easy trodden under these ladies' feet." The second night ends with a flowing of wine from conduits, "during which time the English lords shall mask with the Scottish ladies;" the third night terminates by the six or eight lady-maskers singing a song "as full of harmony as may be devised." The whole entertainment indicates a sincere desire of reconciliation on the part of Elizabeth; but the first scene-a prison -seems strangely ominous of the events which followed six years after.

DURING THE REIGNS OF JAMES I. AND CHARLES I.

There are but few among the writers of masques, pageants, and similar entertainments during the

cosmus (printed 1637). Though furnished forth with a multitude of dramatis persona befitting its ambitious title, including the Four Elements, the Four Complexions, and the Five Senses, this "moral masque" is in reality only one more version of the old contention between sensuality and virtuous love. The hero Physander, representing the "little world" of man, is guided through the conflict and error to ultimate reunion with his heavenly wife Bellanima, who "signifies the soul." The author of this masque appears to have composed dramatic works of nearly every species.

THE MASQUES OF MILTON.

It was reserved to JOHN MILTON (1608-1674) to equal the great poets who preceded him in the elegance and refinement which characterize this kind of half-dramatic, half-lyric composition, while he far surpassed them in loftiness and purity of sentiment. They had exhausted their courtly and scholar-like fancy in inventing elaborate compliments to some of the most worthless and contemptible of princes; Milton communicated to what was originally a mere vehicle for elegant adulation a pure and lofty ethical tone that soars into the very empyrean of moral speculation. The masque of Comus was written to be performed at Ludlow Castle, in the presence of the Earl of Bridgewater, then Governor-General of the Welsh Marches, an accomplished nobleman, and one of the most powerful personages of the time. His daughter, Lady Alice Egerton, and his two sons had lost their way in the woods when walking; and out of this simple incident Milton created the most beautiful pastoral drama that has hitherto been produced. It was represented by the young people who were the heroes of the incident on which it was founded, and the other characters were filled by Milton's friend, Henry Lawes, a composer who had studied in Italy, and who furnished the graceful music that accompanied its lyric portions. The characters are few, consisting of the Lady, the two Brothers, Comus (a wicked enchanter, the allegorical representative of vicious and sensual pleasure, a personage enacted by Lawes), and the Guardian Spirit, disguised as a shepherd, which part one pleases one's self in fancying may have been filled by the poet. The plot is exceedingly simple, rather lyrical than dramatic. The delineation of passion forms no part of the poet's aim; and perhaps the very abstract and ideal nature

of the characters-their impersonality, so to sayadds to the intended effect by raising the mind of the reader into the pure and ethereal atmosphere of philosophical beauty. The dialogues are inexpressibly noble, not, however, as dialogues, for they must rather be regarded as a series of exquisite soliloquies setting forth, in pure and musical eloquence, like that of Plato, the loftiest abstractions of love and virtue. They have the severe and sculptural grace of the Grecian drama, but combined with the warmest coloring of natural beauty; for the frequent descriptions of rural objects possess the richness, the accuracy, and the fancifulness of Fletcher, of Jonson, or of Shakspeare himself. Though the dialogue itself be lyrical in its character, the songs interspersed are of consummate melody. For instance, the Drinking-chorus of Comus's rout, the Echo-song, and the admirable passages with which the Attendant Spirit opens and concludes the piece. The general character of this production Milton undoubtedly borrowed from Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, from Jonson's Masques, and his delicious fragment of a pastoral drama, and probably also from the same Italian sources as had suggested to those great poets the general tone and construction of the pastoral allegory; but in elevation, purity, and dignity, if not also in exquisite delineation of natural beauty, Milton has surpassed Fletcher and Jonson as much as they surpassed Tasso, or as Tasso had surpassed Guarini. In a somewhat similar strain to Comus, Milton composed a fragment entitled Arcades, performed at Harefield before the Countess of Derby by different members of that illustrious family. In this masque Milton wrote only the poetical portion, the rest of the entertainment, as was frequently the case on such occasions, being made up of dances, music and scenic transformations. Though the portion contributed by the poet is comparatively inconsiderable, it exhibits all his usual characteristics.

The tragedy of Samson Agonistes, constructed according to the strictest rules of the classical drama of ancient Greece, belongs to the closing period of Milton's literary career. As in the Grecian tragedies, the action is simple, the persons few, the statuesque severity of the dialogue is relieved by majestic outbursts of lyric verse placed in the mouth of the Chorus, and the catastrophe is, after the Grecian fashion, related by a messenger.